![]() There was no need to call him a great clockmaker to conceal the fact that he was free of another company because he had been trained outside London. Brian Loomes has suggested that Joseph Knibb may have been trained by his cousin Samuel Knibb at Newport Pagnell, so this could be the reason why he was not called a great clockmaker by the CC. It is interesting when they enrolled Joseph Knibb on 16th Jan 1670/71 as a free brother the CC did NOT describe him as a “great clockmaker” but we know that he had worked in Oxford as a great clockmaker and made a number of great clocks of iron in that area about 1670. Daniel Quare was enrolled on Joseph Windmills was enrolled on 29th Sept 1671 and Christopher Gould on 3rd Apr 1682 who were all described as great clockmakers too. They concealed the fact that Thomas Grimes was a freeman of the BC. After the Great Fire of London in 1666 the CC enrolled a number of “great clockmakers”. In 1636 The CC had signed an agreement with the BC not to enrol any “great clockmakers of iron ” but they would only enrol watchmakers and makers of domestic clocks. On the same day the Company also enrolled as a free brother and a “great clockmaker” Thomas Grimes who was definitely a freeman of the BC having been freed in 1668. When they enrolled Thomas Tompion as a free brother of the Company on the 4th Sept 1671 he was described as a “great clockmaker”. The Clockmakers’ Company (CC) records do offer a clue to this conundrum. Fromanteel could still have had the services of the journeyman if he had passed him over to his brother-in-law Andrew Prime (a freeman of the BC who worked with Fromanteel) to finish the remainder of his 7 years training in the BC. Jeremy Evans has suggested that Tompion may have been trained by Ahasaurus Fromanteel, based on the information he wrote in a letter to the CC when they told Fromanteel to get rid of his journeyman who “had served only 5 years to a smith in the country”. Otherwise he risked being fined and his tools confiscated as a non-freeman of a City Company. ![]() Several different masters have been suggested for Tompion but none of the writers explain satisfactorily why early in 1671 Thomas was able set up his workshop inside the City limits (in Water Lane), indicating he had been trained in one of the London Companies. Thomas junior, unlike his father, must have decided he wanted to be more than just a village blacksmith, so then embarked on a different career, leaving Ickwell Green and binding himself to a clock or watchmaker. He would have been trained by his father, at an early age, in the art of blacksmithing, as his father had been taught by his father, and by the normal age for apprenticeship, 14 years, he would have been fully trained as a blacksmith. ![]() This is an interesting synopsis of Tompion’s life.
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